Meta plans to cut 5% of its workforce, weeding out its lowest performers.

Internal Memo

What we know:

In an internal memo sent by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to all employees, he warned that performance-based cuts were coming, as first reported by Bloomberg.

“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,”  Zuckerberg said in the note.

“We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year,” he added, “but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle.”

Impact

Meta currently employs 72,000 people, according to its recent quarterly report, and the 5% reduction could impact 3,600 roles.

What’s next:

Employees who are being laid off are expected to be notified by Feb. 10, while workers in other countries will find out at a later date, according to Bloomberg. Zuckerberg said affected employees would receive generous severance payouts.

Meta has seen sweeping changes in recent weeks, eliminating fact-checking from its platforms, discontinuing its diversity and inclusion initiatives, and loosening rules around hate speech and abuse, specifically regarding sexual orientation, gender identity, and immigration status. The moves come as Zuckerberg improves relations with incoming President Donald Trump.

Previous layoffs

Dig deeper:

In October, Meta said it laid off staff at WhatsApp, Instagram, and its virtual reality technology unit Reality Labs, to realign its resources with its “strategic goals.”

Meta has had several rounds of layoffs to adjust its staffing after it hired aggressively during the pandemic. Earlier this year, it cut several jobs in Reality Labs after letting go of 11,000 employees in 2022. Last year, another 10,000 jobs were cut as CEO Mark Zuckerberg deemed 2023 a “year of efficiency.”